Journal of Political Economy

We test Le Play's (1875) hypothesis that the French Revolution contributed to France's early fertility decline by imposing equal partition of inheritance among all children, including women. We combine new data on local inheritance rules before the Revolution and individual-level demographic data from historical sources and crowdsourced genealogies. Difference-in-differences and regression-discontinuity estimates show that the inheritance reforms enacted during the Revolution reduced completed fertility by 0.5 children. A key mechanism was the desire to avoid land fragmentation across generations. These reforms closed the fertility gap between regions with different historical inheritance rules and crucially contributed to France's demographic transition.

本文验证了勒·普莱（1875）的假设：法国大革命通过要求所有子女（包括女性）平等继承遗产，促进了法国早期的生育率下降。我们结合了大革命前地方继承规则的新数据，以及来自历史档案和众包家谱的个人层面人口数据。双重差分和断点回归估计显示，大革命期间的继承改革使完整生育数量减少了0.5个孩子。一个关键机制是避免土地在代际间细分的愿望。这些改革缩小了不同历史继承规则地区之间的生育差距，对法国的人口转型产生了重要贡献。

We develop a life-cycle model of labor supply and human capital formation that incorporates health shocks, health insurance, and medical treatment decisions. We use the model to study effects of health shocks on health, labor supply, earnings, and earnings inequality. We also simulate provision of public insurance to agents who lack employer-sponsored insurance. While this increases medical spending substantially, it creates positive labor supply incentives for low-skill workers while reducing costs of social insurance, Medicaid, and free care. The net program cost is modest, and all model agents are ex ante better off in a balanced budget simulation.

本文构建了一个生命周期劳动供给和人力资本形成模型，整合了健康冲击、健康保险和医疗决策。我们用该模型研究健康冲击对健康、劳动供给、收入及收入不平等的影响。我们还模拟了为缺乏雇主提供保险的群体提供公共保险的效果。虽然这显著增加了医疗支出，但为低技能工人创造了正向劳动供给激励，同时降低了社会保险、医疗补助和免费医疗的成本。净项目成本适中，在平衡预算模拟中所有模型代理人都获得了事前改善。

This paper examines the nature of entrepreneurship using a novel panel dataset based on US Internal Revenue Service data. We analyze income growth trajectories and the determinants of entrepreneurial choice for business owners. Compared with prior household survey–based studies, we find that self-employed individuals have significantly higher average incomes and steeper income growth than their wage-earning matched peers. Contrary to survey evidence, we find a limited role for nonpecuniary motives, uninsurable risk, and liquidity constraints driving entrepreneurial choice. Prior work experience predicts entrepreneurial entry. Entry and exit rates into self-employment remain stable over time, including during the Great Recession.

本文利用美国国税局数据构建的新型面板数据集，考察企业家精神。我们分析了企业主的收入增长轨迹和企业家选择决定因素。与以往基于家庭调查的研究相比，我们发现自雇个体的平均收入和收入增长显著高于其匹配的工薪阶层同行。与调查证据相反，我们发现非货币动机、不可保险风险和流动性约束对企业家的选择影响有限。先前工作经验预测企业家进入。自雇的进入和退出率随时间保持稳定，包括在大衰退期间。

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for linking preferences for personal and social consumption and attitudes toward risk. We also offer an experimental test of the theory in which subjects were confronted with risky personal choices, riskless social choices, and risky social choices. Revealed preference tests show that subject choices are generally consistent within each choice domain but frequently involve at least some errors. We test for consistency across choice domains using a revealed preference test that accounts for these errors. The choices of a large majority of subjects are consistent with the predictions of our theory.

本文提供了将个人消费偏好与社会消费偏好以及风险态度联系起来的必要和充分条件。我们还提供了该理论的实验检验，被试面对风险个人选择、无风险社会选择和风险社会选择。显示性偏好检验表明，被试在每个选择领域内的选择总体一致，但经常包含至少一些错误。我们使用考虑这些错误的显示性偏好检验来检验跨选择领域的一致性。大多数被试的选择与我们的理论预测一致。

Experimental evidence from Pakistan shows that distance poses a large and discontinuous access constraint: women with village-based training centers are four times more likely to access valued training opportunities. More than half of the travel penalty is incurred when crossing the village boundary. Exogenous stipend variation reveals that this boundary effect is costly to offset and is not explained by travel costs. Security considerations are an important factor: providing secure group transport raises take-up, while women with greater safety concerns and those traversing underpopulated areas, a proxy for insecurity, have lower take-up. The training has similar positive benefits for women attending inside- and outside-village centers.

来自巴基斯坦的实验证据表明，距离构成了一个巨大且不连续的获取约束：拥有村庄培训中心所在地的女性获得有价值培训机会的可能性是其四倍。超过一半的出行惩罚发生在跨越村庄边界时。外生助学金变化表明，这种边界效应代价高昂，无法用出行成本解释。安全考虑是一个重要因素：提供安全团体交通提高了参与率，而安全顾虑较大以及穿越人口稀少地区（不安全感的代理指标）的女性参与率较低。在村庄内外中心参加培训的女性都获得了类似正向收益。

The Allais critique of expected utility theory (EUT) has led to the development of theories of choice under risk that relax the independence axiom but adhere to the fundamental/conventional axioms of ordering (completeness and transitivity) and monotonicity (with respect to first-order stochastic dominance). Unlike experimental work designed to test independence, our experiment is comprehensive, testing the entire set of axioms on which EUT is based. Our econometric analysis is also nonparametric and performed at the level of each individual subject. For the vast majority of subjects, departures from independence are small relative to departures from ordering and/or monotonicity.

阿莱对预期效用理论（EUT）的批评推动了放松独立性公理但遵从排序基本/常规公理（完备性和传递性）和关于一阶随机占优的单调性的风险决策理论发展。与旨在检验独立性的实验设计不同，我们的实验是全面的，检验EUT所基于的整套公理。我们的计量经济分析也是非参数的，并在每个个体层面进行。对于绝大多数被试而言，违背独立性的程度小于违背排序和/或单调性的程度。